No, equal loot did that. Shared lockouts happened in ICC, and made not a dent in the numbers. Equal loot was Blizzard saying:
"This hard thing is just as rewarding as this easy thing."

Every 25 has a better 10s inside it. We held out as long as we could, but at some point it was convert to two 10s and get way more progression that way. Simply no choice about it, very basic economics.

If you have a job, think about it this way. Pretend that instead of going to work and doing whatever it is that you do, that you and two of your friends could make the same amount, for the same amount of work, with LESS risk. You'd probably do that- you'd be a fool not to. This is very close to that.

But for Blizzard to change it now would devastate their raiding community. Only an announcement like "cross server guilds" (aka, realm mergers in all but name) delivered simultaneously could possibly abate a portion of the rage, and I'm betting at least 10% of raiders would honestly and legitimately quit, having viewed their WoW as having been shut down.

Blizzard should take this lesson, which was available for them back in ICC when we told them this exact thing would happen, and remember it when designing future MMOs.

More epic? I guess it might seem that way with a few more bodies in the instance.

More prestigious? I don't think even most 25m raiders believe that. They just want their shinies in the easiest mode possible and they have enough people around to fill them out.

Been there, done that. Needed more of a challenge. Moved on to 10hm.

Perhaps you should try some proper raiding instead of coasting through the easiest mode?

Proper raiding and 10 man don't go well together, sorry bro.

Did you ever stop and wonder why the best players in the world raid 25? They raid 25 because it is more of a feat, and more prestigious than your glorified dungeon group. They are not stupid people, they understand what is truly harder, and what will grant more recognition. That, at this current moment in time isn't 10 man.

No, equal loot did that. Shared lockouts happened in ICC, and made not a dent in the numbers. Equal loot was Blizzard saying:
"This hard thing is just as rewarding as this easy thing."

Every 25 has a better 10s inside it. We held out as long as we could, but at some point it was convert to two 10s and get way more progression that way. Simply no choice about it, very basic economics.

If you have a job, think about it this way. Pretend that instead of going to work and doing whatever it is that you do, that you and two of your friends could make the same amount, for the same amount of work, with LESS risk. You'd probably do that- you'd be a fool not to. This is very close to that.

But for Blizzard to change it now would devastate their raiding community. Only an announcement like "cross server guilds" (aka, realm mergers in all but name) delivered simultaneously could possibly abate a portion of the rage, and I'm betting at least 10% of raiders would honestly and legitimately quit, having viewed their WoW as having been shut down.

Blizzard should take this lesson, which was available for them back in ICC when we told them this exact thing would happen, and remember it when designing future MMOs.

So you cut 10 players (roughly) and took the better 20 and got more progress... Now just to invite another 10 players to my 10 man guild and cherrypick the best...

Now try keeping a 25 guild together under those circumstances. Blizzard killed 25 man raiding. With basic economics. Fixing it will blow everything up, so IMO take that knowledge to Titan, or maybe actually read forums when smart people are talking!

I take it you consider your opinions to be smarter than most peoples then...

Again, progression and heroic raiding isn't relly involved in this debate, which is talking about popularity of raid size.

No, that's not true. In T11, I would take a top group of our guys and run one of the instances each week, and the others we would run 25 man. Even with such a casual approach, we dug several hard modes in each one that our 25 group could not even complete in tier.

Firelands was what broke us, because we could no longer do progression on the side as a top group and then meet back with everyone else for a fraction of the content.

As a 10 guild, we are great. As a 25 guild, we are merely good. The difference is a bunch of heroic boss kills, and is not small. So yea, it's all about progression- you get better loot, and more of it, in 10s. MORE OF IT because MORE BOSSES DIE. BETTER LOOT, because you get heroic kills you wouldn't get as 25s.

Now try keeping a 25 guild together under those circumstances. Blizzard killed 25 man raiding. With basic economics. Fixing it will blow everything up, so IMO take that knowledge to Titan, or maybe actually read forums when smart people are talking!

Nobody will care about trivial amounts of gold / mats that are dead cheap on AH anyway. It needs to be something unique and substantial or no dice.

Gotta say I agree. It's a nice thought OP and well thought out, but it won't be enough to incentivize most people. I think honestly dropping a little higher ilvl of items would be appropriate. Not a big increase, but maybe 4 ilvls? I know that most people doing 10 man raids will probably hate this idea, but something has to be done here or 25 man raids will be gone. I dislike the idea of having both 10 and 25 man raids personally. I thought the entire point of dropping down from 40 man raids to 25 was to make it easier on folks. IMO Blizzard should just give us one kind of raid. A number between 15 and 20 is ideal. I think 17 would be perfect. That's room for 10 DPS, 5 Healers, 2 Tanks.

So you're saying in progression raiding and HC modes it's fine to pug people and have people fuck up? Okay, that's fine. It's not what happens in reality, but you're free to hold onto any delusions you wish.

And you're having fun in your glorified party in an undertuned version of bosses that look the same as in a real raid instance?

Challenge in 10m? You mean when the stone guards aren't the ideal combination? Aww poor you.

LOL Yeah I don't know what that guy is smoking. Calling 10s harder than 25. That is RARELY the case. There's been a few fights where 10 mans were more difficult than their 25 man counter part such as Tier 11 when Cata first dropped, but they're few and far inbetween.

In 25s you can afford to have a few deaths and you can even pull if you're backfilling a few players. Both really make you stop in your tracks on 10s. In 25, it's easier to fade back into the group if you're still not 100% confident in what you're doing. In 10s, it's harder to be a wallflower.

I guess maybe you should just stop making excuses for coasting through the easier of the two modes.

So you cut 10 players (roughly) and took the better 20 and got more progress... Now just to invite another 10 players to my 10 man guild and cherrypick the best...

What?

No, we run two 10s. We have a group 1 and a group 2. We didn't need to cut anyone. It became almost impossible to recruit for 25s once Blizzard broke the 25 man raiding game, so no one thought stuff like "I want good loot, lemme go find a 25 guild". We had a roster of 26 when we went to two 10s, and were normally filling our raids with a couple good out of guilds and some long time socials who were ex-raiders, who I begged to show up for a bit while we tried to recruit.

The net effect was:

Our "Group 1" blew pretty much straight into heroics, and has been doing that each tier since then.
Our "Group 2" had about the same progression as we did as a 25 guild, maybe behind by a boss or two.

No one got cut or sat. We did have a couple people leave to run 25s on another server (I said we held out as long as we could, so us stopping was the end of 25 raiding on Ursin Alliance- and the only horde guild doing it was BR, and is now on a BR realm, and couldn't help you anyway if you didn't speak that), but we knew they would leave because we asked!

More loot.
Customizable loot as in 5 items out of 6 are still random but that 6th item you choose directly from the loot table.

Because let's be honest, anything not related to loot would just not work anyway.

This would be a good idea. Everyone saying "just give more loot to drop" that already happens NOW. That is not going to give more incentives for people to do 25 mans. It would have to be something that deals with loot or else there is no point.

Sorry OP, I do 25 mans now and those suggestions are not good enough to get others who are doing 10 man's now to switch back to 25. Having more gold and raid consumables doesn't do anything. They are already extremely easy to get now. I like raiding 25 mans because of the atmosphere, I just don't like small raids personally. For me, 10 mans were always there to have a small niche group to do achievements (back in Wrath). You get the people together you knew wouldn't mess up due to stupidity and had that A Team go in and get the meta. Then, with your 25 man group you slowly get the raid achievements.

You mean Paragon? Who were forced to go 10 man because they couldn't sustain their roster with the level of performance required to raid 25H at world class level? Much like most other top guilds who down-sized?

yeah blizz pissed on their own bonfire by equalizing both raiding sizes, the incentive to manage more ppl was driven on the idea that you get better loot, not just because you 'happen to have 25 ppl around'.

bleh, i still feel like they slapped everyone in the face when they stopped you getting saved to both 10 and 25 versions, that was my favourite part of wrath, even if the whole expansion was considered a hilarity for most, one thing they did right was allowing everyone to get saved twice, i'd spend the first part of a week pugging the 10 man, and then the 2nd half of the week progressing 25 man.. after that change my guild went to shit noone logged in because they'd cut the actual fun things to do in wow in half.. now they wonder why 25's are dying, i wonder maybe its because you can get the same result from doing it 10man?

No, we run two 10s. We have a group 1 and a group 2. We didn't need to cut anyone. It became almost impossible to recruit for 25s once Blizzard broke the 25 man raiding game, so no one thought stuff like "I want good loot, lemme go find a 25 guild". We had a roster of 26 when we went to two 10s, and were normally filling our raids with a couple good out of guilds and some long time socials who were ex-raiders, who I begged to show up for a bit while we tried to recruit.

The net effect was:

Our "Group 1" blew pretty much straight into heroics, and has been doing that each tier since then.
Our "Group 2" had about the same progression as we did as a 25 guild, maybe behind by a boss or two.

No one got cut or sat. We did have a couple people leave to run 25s on another server (I said we held out as long as we could, so us stopping was the end of 25 raiding on Ursin Alliance- and the only horde guild doing it was BR, and is now on a BR realm, and couldn't help you anyway if you didn't speak that), but we knew they would leave because we asked!

Oh my bad, you put together a "team A" and a "team B"

It's still not really representational of the choices that a 10 man guild with a similar size roster can make, without cutting out / replacing raiders (which a 25 man guild is perfectly capable of doing), or putting the weaker links into their own team and having a stronger and a weaker team.

There is no real reason why your "team B" with the lesser progress, would have the lesser progress unless you didn't do what I just outlined. So I was slightly off base with your roster numbers, but my point still stands you cherry picked 10 players for "team A" which isn't really an option for a normal roster 10 man guild. For a 10 man guild that has never had a 25 size roster, you use what you have, or recruit better - exactly the same as you do in 25 man.

I guess maybe you should just stop making excuses for coasting through the easier of the two modes.

Fun times, now you're even picking a small part out of a small post. Hard to handle the truth?

Also, according to the people who make the game, 25s need their extra effort rewarded, yet you seem against that. So are they right, or are they wrong, which is it?

Being a wallflower in 25s is unacceptable ever since they made mechanics like chains on stoneguard, feng's debuff, elegon's debuff/adds, Will's avoid mechanic, tornados's on blade lord, wind bombs on wind lord, shape life on amber shaper, debuff on P1 empress, traps on P2 empress, fears on P3 empress etc, etc, etc. I can continue if you like, but I guess you already know your point is false unless you want to call "I need to interrupt more often than a 25m raider" skill.

I kind of don't really want to step into this 10vs25 debate, as it is completely pointless.

I just wish to point out to everybody that has been saying that 25m requires more time to manage, that I agree. But, you also have 2.5 times the amount of people you should make officers. A 10m guild can be (easily) run by 1 person. I've done this for quite a while and specially on a low-pop server that wasn't always easy, specially for the recruiting. That will be the only one I will really give 25m! Recruiting can be a pain in the ass on 10m, it is probably way worse for 25m. However, all the other officer related tasks should have little consequence. As you should have 2.5 (3) times more officers. So what I did alone for a 10m guild, you should do with 3 people for a 25m.

If you have an officer for healers, ranged and melee combined with 2 tanks who can work together you can easily setup rotations for whatever you need. It just needs to be clear which officer is responsible for which task.

Now as for this whole 25m is dieing but 10m suxxx debate.. The only thing I think Blizzard can do is go back to a single raidsize for all raids. Most likely this should be a new "middle" sized raid with somewhere between the 15 and 20 people in it. Obviously people will whine for a while but it would instantly kill the discussion, the discrimination and the loot-related problems. I personally would like to see Blizzard take initiative!

Now, to go back to the OP. I feel (whatever my raid preference might be) that rewarding one over an other in order to keep it alive is an absolutely stupid idea. Handing out whatever to one group and not to the other will make the other complain. Making it equal will make the 25m group complain (like it has been doing since cata) so whatever happens lots of complaining will happen! Guaranteed!

Now, to end my rambling.. A lot of people say that Blizzard killed 25m raiding with the introduction of equal loot. I disagree, I think that they killed 25m raiding when they introduced 10m for the same dungeon. It just took a while to bleed out!